Ed Miliband has been MP for Doncaster North since 2005. His career divides cleanly into three phases: rising minister, defeated leader, returning Energy Secretary. The first phase produced the Climate Change Act. The second phase ended in the 2015 wipeout. The third phase is producing the most ideologically driven policy programme any UK government has run on energy in a generation, with all the political risk that implies.

The Climate Change Act of 2008 is the most consequential piece of legislation he is associated with. It set the UK's legally binding emissions targets for the first time, made climate policy non negotiable in subsequent administrations of both colours, and shaped the architecture every government since has had to work inside. It is unusual for a single junior cabinet minister to leave a footprint that lasts that long.

The leadership years are the harder part of the record. Miliband narrowly defeated his brother David in 2010 in a contest that the trade union vote decided. He inherited a party still bruised by the 2010 defeat and tried to reposition it leftward without conceding economic credibility. The 2015 result was bad: 232 seats, the worst Labour total since 1987. Miliband took responsibility and resigned. The defeat was not only his, but it was him on the ballot and his image that was the political problem the party had to address afterwards.

There is the bacon sandwich photograph, which became a shorthand for everything Labour had failed to do on his image. There is also the lasting argument that the 2015 defeat was structural rather than personal, that the SNP wipeout in Scotland and the post 2008 economic credibility gap with Cameron's Conservatives would have hurt any leader. Both readings have some basis. The personal image version is the one most voters remember.

The return under Starmer placed him back in his original brief. As Energy Secretary in 2024 he has driven the GB Energy plan, the push for clean power by 2030, the expansion of onshore wind. These are ideologically driven choices, not technocratic compromises. Critics on the right see ideological overreach, energy security risks and unrealistic timelines. Supporters see the most serious attempt at industrial transition any UK government has made.

The political risk sits in the gap between target and delivery. The Climate Change Act set the framework. Hitting clean power 2030 requires actually building the grid, the storage, the supply chains and the offshore capacity inside a planning system that historically takes longer than the deadline allows. If the timeline slips, the political cost is his.

He is intellectually serious and personally well liked across the chamber. His weakness has always been the same. The vision is clearer than the implementation. Whether 2030 changes that, or confirms it, will probably define how this second act is remembered.